In the meat industry, and particularly in those areas devoted to the processing of beef and pork, meat packers slaughter animals in a process in which the animals are stunned, bled, skinned, eviscerated, and fabricated into meat sections which are marketable to the public or the restaurant trade. Animals enter a meat slaughter plant with various foreign materials present on their hair, including blood, dirt, manure, mud and vegetative material. An animal's hair is also contaminated with a multitude of microorganisms, some of which are pathogenic to humans. Most bacteria present in a meat slaughter and processing facility are carried into the facility on the hides of animals to be slaughtered. During the slaughtering process, these microorganisms contact meat and other meat by-products, thereby contaminating such products, creating handling problems and reducing the shelf life and safety of meat products.
The control of contamination by microorganisms is a recognized problem in the meat packing industry. Many techniques have been employed in the past in an effort to destroy surface bacterial flora on meat. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,216 to Clayton discloses a disinfection system using acetic acid spray in order to reduce bacteria levels and thereby increase shelf life of meat products. Other inventors have utilized anti-microbial agents for preserving products normally subject to microbial spoilage. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,915,889 to Jurd discloses a certain anti-microbial agent that can be applied for preservation of a wide variety of substances including meat by-products.
Still other inventors have recognized the advantages of dehairing animals to facilitate the slaughtering process. U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,152 to Georges discloses an apparatus and method for slaughtering animals by bleeding an animal, electrostatically charging the animal's hair, applying a combustible fluid to the hair and subsequently igniting the combustible fluid to burn the hair from the animal's body. U.S. Pat. No. 4,309,795 to Simonsen discloses a method and apparatus for dehairing hogs wherein the hog is bled, its skin is scalded with hot water and then subjected to abrasive treatment to remove the hog's hair. U.S. Pat. No. 5,149,295 to Bowling et al., which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses the use of a depilatory substance to remove animal hair, such depilatory substance including a chemical that is able to cleave disulfide bonds between cysteine amino acid residues present in animal hair.
Methods for dehairing which use chemicals to remove animal hair, however, generate chemical and animal byproducts which can be toxic and/or environmentally hazardous and can pose significant problems for waste disposal. Therefore, a need exists for a method for dehairing animals which includes protocols for recycling and/or safely disposing of compositions and waste products produced during the process. The present invention addresses such a need by providing a process for reducing bacterial contamination of meat and meat by-products from the outset of the slaughtering process, prior to the exsanguination of the animal, while minimizing the cost and environmental impact of such a process through a novel recycle, reuse and disposal system.